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“It’s quite horrific the amount pollution we cause in the way people are buried nowadays. We bury a whole Golden Gate Bridge every year in steel – a huge amount of materials and waste of electricity and space, “ said Jane Hillhouse.

She’s one of about a dozens vendors at the Green Funeral Fair, held at a non-denominational church in Berkeley, California.

She owns Final Footprint, a company that sells caskets made from renewable resources, such as bamboo, banana leaf, willow, pine and even cardboard.

“I have got some very beautiful bamboo caskets that were made in Indonesia,” Hillhouse says. “It’s completely biodegradable, every part, there’s no metal on them at all. It’s also lined in cotton, which is organic.”

Her products are used by a growing number of people who are concerned about the environmental impacts of burials.

Esmerelda Kent, a former costume designer, is here to show off her biodegradable burial shrouds. They range form $300 for a simple cotton one, to $1,000 for a silk-taffeta shroud lined with lavender and sage.

“We don’t believe in converting people,” Kent says.  “It’s a very personal choice what people choose to do. We just want to make other options available to people because we have a different vision, a different aesthetic. Our vision of  ‘mort-couture’ is to look beautiful in the last thing you’ll ever wear.”

Kent says the business of “mort couture” took off after one of her shrouds was featured in the HBO series “Six Feet Under.”

Liz O’Conell-Gates organized the green funeral expo. She’s a native of Ireland who says in this country, death and dying are taboo topics.

“The idea was to bring all topics related to grieving, mourning and catharsis thru art or whatever means, into the open.,” she says.  “And not have the topic of death be swept under the carpet as it seems to be done here.“

O’Connell-Gates says green funerals are not only better for the environment, but more personalized and cheaper for the family.

California’s only green burial ground – Fernwood Cemetery in Mill Valley – sent Raymond Soudah, a sales manager, to the fair.

“Theres no embalming, no concrete liners, you can be wrapped in a shroud and placed into the earth. And we don’t use regular headstones, we use natural rocks with engraving,” he says.

Jerrigrace Lyons is a self-described “death midwife.” She also teaches people how to hold a home funeral.

“This is very ancient and it’s still done around the world,” Lyons says.

We are actually restoring something that was always ours but people have forgotten. They didn’t know, don’t know what their legal rights are. That they can fill out and file their own death certificate, don’t know they can transport their loved one in a casket they built, and then drive them to the cemetery or crematorium themselves.”

The casket maker, Jane Hillhouse, says many people can’t appreciate a home funeral unless they’ve been to one.

“A home funeral is a very cathartic experience. It’s wonderful,” she says. “Otherwise you’re at a hospital and somebody dies and they’re whisked away and that’s it. It’s like the person never lived. It’s the strangest feeling. Which I only just experienced recently when my mother in law died. It’s so strange to me.”

To keep the funeral fair from being too morbid, Liz O’Connell-Grace invited artists and musicians to take part, including the Threshold Choir, which sings at the bedsides of dying people.

“We are disconnected from the reality that we all have a natural lifecycle, just like the plants, the crops, the seasons,” O’Connell-Gates says. “But with the baby boomers confronting their own mortality, confronting their parents’ mortality, I think especially in this part of the country. You know, Berkeley.”

If dying is all about becoming one with the earth, they argue, why delay the process with embalming fluids and heavy steel vaults?

And with 2.5 million Americans dying each year, green funeral advocates say it’s time to think about more sustainable practices.